PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

His attitude toward other employees was---to say the least---

consistently unpleasant, at best, and hateful at worst; and,

most days, the worst was to be expected.  He was the most

senior of the workers, retained---despite his nasty

personality---because his window displays were so

exquisitely artistic, and so commercially attractive to

customers, passersby, and fashion editors as to become the

most celebrated in the City, the great pride of our

company, and the envy of our competitors.  His holiday

arrangements were especially admired---an anomaly

when you consider that he despised the holidays'

traditions.  He lived in one of the City's oldest

apartment buildings, occupying a suite of rooms to which---

according to gossip---he brought damaged or "retired"

mannequins to pose in postures and scenes abject, 

bizarre, even terrifying.  You can imagine---and I

can hardly describe---our shock to find him, one

morning, dead in the main window surrounded by

broken mannequins, their limbs twisted to disturbing

positions, some of their heads shattered; but worse---and I

shudder to remember it---was the appearance of the

corpse of the Chief Window Dresser, stiffended into an

arch that must have been caused by a final, unbearable,

unimaginable agony; and upon his face, the rictus of

supreme existential horror, which enveloped his

departing soul such that it will never, ever, find

escape or respite, throughout the eternity that he must suffer.

Starward